Online shoppers from Ireland, Austria and Belgium are most likely to buy products and services from a foreign e-commerce retailer. This was reported in a survey from PayPal and Ipsos, which asked respondents to name the countries from which they purchased something online in the past 12 months (including the home country, if applicable). 84 percent of the Irish respondents said they would buy items from foreign retailers. Consumers in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the three European countries with the highest online share of retail trade, seem less inclined to shop across their own borders.

Language and the local presence of Amazon look to be important drivers for online shopping behavior in Europe. The German platform of Amazon, for example, was the most popular online store in Austria in 2017, while in the same year Amazon.it generated 2.6 billion U.S. dollars worth of revenue within Italy. The Netherlands and Poland are exceptions to this, as both have a strongly developed domestic e-commerce market.

Alibaba and its platforms Aliexpress and Tmall are also popular among European consumers. 47 percent of Dutch respondents indicated in 2017 they purchased goods online through a Chinese website.